Afanaseva, Tatiana Andreeva

Novosokolniki

21 March, 2007

Interviewed by: Nina Vasilevna and Olga Kapralova

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Can you tell us who your parents were?

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My parents were teachers in a primary school in the village.

Do you have any old photos of the years before the war...?

We have no photos because in 1955, the school where they were all kept burnt down. Everything my parents had – and my mother and father both had medals which they had received in the Great Fatherland War, and photographs – and everything else, it was all destroyed. And my grandmother, who might have had some photographs, she also lived through the occupation. Then my other grandparents, my mother's parents, they lived in the Rostov region of Ugodichi village, in Yaroslav oblast.

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I lived in the village... and there was no church in the village because Old Believers lived there, but they used to get together for the big religious festivals, I remember that, in two houses, and they would take the service. They weren't priests really... they just managed to read the holy books which they had managed to keep, so that was the sort of religious service we used to have. And they conducted funerals and baptised children – that was what they used to do.

We are particularly interested in the 1930s and 1940s – what do you know about what happened in those years?

The thing is that my father told me what had happened to his family just before his death, about 2 years, or rather 8 years ago. He told me what had happened to his family in the 1930s, and my mother had told me before that. But to me, for example, it wasn't really clear... and only now, I understand what happened then, when history is being rewritten, in a completely different way. And we know that history was very much altered, embellished, particularly in the 1930s. My father told me that his parents – his father worked on the railways – the family was large, but when the revolution happened and they started giving away land, then he and my grandmother immediately went off to that region, that was in ..., that's where the land was. The land was very good and their children had already grown up, so the family was strong, hard-working, and they had a house by the side of a lake – a hutor, they called it. And since they worked so hard, they didn't need extra hands, and my grandmother said that lots of different things grew in the first year, and then in the second year. In other words, they had very good harvests and my grandfather, as he was allowed to at that time, was able to sell it. They already had 3 horses, a reaper, their own seeder, and lots of other things. And the father, or rather my grandfather, was already starting to think about how they could open a small tea-house at the crossroads, on the road between Leningrad and Kiev, with the money they had managed to save.

But then the 1930s arrived and my grandfather was called up before the village soviet, and there they asked him – as my father told me later – why he hadn't joined the kolkhoz. My father told me that his father was called up and they put a revolver on the table and said: 'you'd better be in the kolkhoz tomorrow, with all your animals and your whole family'. My grandfather went home. He was a sensible man and he got home, told his wife, and my grandmother was – well, she was very hard-working and she really minded, she'd put a lot of energy into that land. So of course she said that she didn't want to join the kolkhoz, and she set up a scene. Then grandfather said – go and get your things, we're going to load them up, and tomorrow we're going with our things and with the children. Grandmother started crying and went off to collect her things, everything she was going to hand over to the kolkhoz. Next day they took everything off, everything they had, and their horses and other things to the kolkhoz. But my grandfather, as he was really very clever, he said that they would join the kolkhoz, but his children wouldn't. So he sent off all his children – and he had 5 of them – he sent them off to study further. He could do that.

Uncle Petya was an excellent tractor mechanic and worked at MTS He sent my father off to study at the teacher training college, Aunt Nastya he sent off to medical school and only little Vera was left, and she lived through the occupation together with my grandmother. She was still very small... So that's it, that's what it was like. After the war, of course there was no-one left in the kolkhoz. Babushka was delighted, because all her children came home alive after the war – and little Vera was alive too. Well, but Uncle Petya did die about 5 or 6 years after the war ended. He had so many wounds.

How old were you at that time?

When?

At that time... you weren't born by then?

No – I was born in 1948. But my father told us all that just before he died. I was surprised that he had said nothing for so long, particularly as I thought of him as a very brave person, not afraid of anything. But it so happened that he only told us all that just before he died, just a few years ago. Just 2 years before his death he told us all that. And I learnt all that, and he said it was because... I can even say this, really ... perestroika had just started and he was already on a pension, he was very old already. And what happened was that there were only pensioners and old people left in the village and he went off to the village soviet, to the boss, and he asked if asked if they could sell them a horse, for the village, so that the old people could plough their gardens, fetch the hay, logs, go to the shop... him and another guy... and he couldn't manage to raise the cash on his own... and he told me all that...

Can you tell me what you know about collectivisation and de-kulakisation?

Well, collectivisation went like that – that's what my father told me about his experience. And my mother, her father used to sell horses, but he was a clever man and he used to go to Moscow frequently... he managed somehow to sort things out, and as a result, he sold all his property and bought different valuables which, as far as I understand, he gave away to his children who were grown up by that time. When they came to take away his property, it turned out that he'd got nothing left – so he avoided it like that.

But my mother had to carry the can: she grew up and studied at the teacher training institute, and then she was sent off to the front in 1942. I said to Mama – 'But you wanted to go to the front, didn't you?', I was proud of that, but she said no, that she of course hadn't wanted to go, that it was very, very frightening... and she said that when the aeroplanes flew over, everyone rushed for the bomb shelter, everyone hid somewhere. And we had to shoot.

Were people able to change their place of residence at that time?

No... it was very difficult. I even remember in 1955, I knew everything by then.. well in the 1930s it was pretty much impossible, and even in 1955, in the villages, in the kolkhoz... we were teachers, so it didn't really concern me, but with the children I taught, when they finished school in the 8th class, they were 15, and their parents used to try to send them off somewhere, so that they could get a qualification from the town and somehow manage to stay there. But just in order to send them off to the town, even to study at the technical college, they couldn't leave because their parents had to get an official document a 'Departure' document which said they had permission to go and study in college.

And what about changing place of work, or was that forbidden?

Well for that you needed both time and the possibility to make the change... I don't remember how long the working day was but Mama told me how she was sent off for work experience while she was still at college and it was about 15 kilometres from the village. There was another girl there who worked with her, but she was a teacher, and they used to go home on days off... Mama came back, and so did that girl from another village... they were dropped back, or something. Anyway, she was late by 7 minutes for work, and after that she had to work 3 or 4 days for no pay. How she was supposed to live, no-one knows.

Do you know whether certain literature was forbidden at that time?

I do... I'll tell you. I've forgotten the writer but he wrote about Babi Yar [she says 'yad' – ie hell] and suddenly – off he went abroad, became a dissident. The book was excellent – patriotic, told about the Great Fatherland War – and suddenly they banned it. Then there was Solzhenitzyn's 'Last (sic) Day of Ivan Denisovich', I did manage to read that. A teacher of history had got hold of it and I wanted to read it, to find out why it had been banned. But I couldn't find it anywhere. Then she lent it to me.

Can you tell us about food products – were there things you couldn't get hold of?

Well first of all, people didn't have as much money as they do now. Maybe if you wanted to, even if there were deficits, you could get hold of things – but people didn't have the money or the possibility. But after the 1970s, things just got worse and worse.

Which period do you think was the most difficult?

I think that the period before the war was the most difficult for people, because they really didn't know what was coming, and I think that the repression – they could end up there at any moment, for whatever reason. Then by the end of the war, people had learnt to hold their tongues. In any case, they had been through such a terrible war that people felt completely different.

Did you know anything about the repression, and did it affect you or anyone you know?

Well, I told you – both my grandfathers were clever, and they didn't try to stand up to the authorities. I mean they couldn't go anywhere, but they realised that it was pointless to try to resist – so that's why it didn't affect us.

Do you think that the repression was justified?

I think that no-one has the right to take away a person's freedom, and what he earns for himself, he should be allowed to decide how to spend. And in general, people shouldn't have to be afraid, they should be free, be able to feel freedom.

And who do you think was guilty for what happened, in the war, for the destruction?

You know, I read a lot of literature and if I draw conclusions, it is that I think the war happened in order to get rid of a lot of people. When there was the famine, nothing was done to save them. Then collectivisation started... those people who were capable of working, they had large families – they went off quite calmly somewhere or other: right? And then they calmly disappeared. A huge number of good and healthy people were just destroyed. And my grandmother was terrified because she was in occupied territory, she was a prisoner near the town of Orlom. And she was delighted that all her children returned from the war alive.

What do you think about Stalin himself?

I can't think well of him: through his personal ambition, he destroyed a huge number of people.

What do you think if you compare life today, and life at that time?

It's always hard work, everywhere. Of course I don't like what's happening today – but even so.

Tell me, did you used to celebrate festivals, holidays?

First of all, the villages were very large – for example, there's a little book 'The Countryman's Calendar' which has all the different countryside festivals. Every village in turn would organise a fair, and young people would meet there to sing and dance. They would sell things, depending on the season. I even remember what it was like in our village – on the 21st September there would be a squeeze-box playing, of course no-one went to work on that day, even if it was Thursday or Wednesday, we still didn't work. We always celebrated the Trinity – everyone went to the cemetery, and that was always a day off.

Now tell us about love... how you got married, and everything

My grandmother married her husband and she always used to say that she didn't love him. And we were all amazed – how could grandmother say that! I didn't ask my grandfather – he died in 1941. But grandmother said she didn't love him. I asked – well why... of course, everyone asked her that question. And she said he stole me. She was 13 years old and very hard-working – everything she did with her hands was a triumph and the main thing was that you could count on one hand the number of things she couldn't do. And what she could do – well she really was an extraordinary woman. And they had a fine horse and I [sic] was walking along the road and there was some sort of celebration going on, and they caught her and off they went. But she tore herself free and ran away, but the snow was very deep and the horse was really fine, and they put her in the sledge and took her away. And in the village it was like this, that if you didn't spend the night at home, but spent it in some young man's company, then you had to marry him. Because it was a scandal, it was shaming for your parents and they would worry, and would anyway force you to get married. And they forced him to marry her, but he wanted to marry her – it was she that didn't want to. So that's how she came to live with him, for a long time, and they had lots of children – she gave birth to 8 children, of which 3 died in infancy and 5 were left.

Tell me – were you baptised?

Yes, I was baptised in Rostov, in Yaroslav oblast.

Can you tell us what you think about young people today?

I wouldn't say that young people are worse than they used to be. I worked in a school, I saw them, and I can't say they are any worse. The only thing that I don't like is that they seem to do everything very superficially. They don't try to go deeper. There is no self-education, no self-discipline – that doesn't seem to to be there in them.

When you went to school, was it far from home? What was it like?

The school I was in until the 4th class was a wonderful school. My parents worked there... Mama didn't work there because she was already on an invalid's allowance, but there was another teacher and my father worked in the school. The school was wonderful because my father was a really good teacher – he remembered everything, always asked about my health. Secondly, it was nice in school because it was a small one – about 30 in each class. When it was break time, we could play chase, hide-and-seek, and sometimes the break went on for a whole hour. It wasn't difficult, and he was a very inquisitive person himself – for example we could build a dam in the stream which was near the school. Everything was very peaceful, there didn't seem to be any aggressive children. There was no television, not everyone even had a radio at home. And then I went on to a 8-year school which was 4 kilometres away from the village and we had to walk there every day. By half past eight we had to be in school... we got up at half past seven, at eight we left the village and walked fairly quickly. And we walked through the forest, a group of us with the little ones behind and us in front. They didn't clean the roads so we had to do that ourselves – walking was hard work and there were wolves in the forest, so it was a bit scary as well.

Did your parents have passports?

My parents – grandmother was already quite old, she wasn't working any more and she lived in the village. But then she went to town and there they gave everyone passports.

Thank you so much for your time... there will be a book about the things you have told us, and an exhibition in the local museum. We will certainly invite you!